Cowardly Impotence Reigns : Nothing’s Safer for Terrorists Than Killing Another American

More than 20 years ago, I read a book by James Corbett, a British subject with a most unusual hobby: He hunted man-eating tigers. While on a hunt he encountered an Indian chap whose face had been nastily rearranged. The man explained that he had been attacked while cutting wood on the edge of a bluff. While the cat was chewing on his face, the man explained, “very slowly, so as not to anger the tiger,” he slipped his feet under the animal and flipped it over the edge of a bluff, after which he ran away.

Some phrases, once read, stick in your mind forever. So as not to anger the tiger ? The damn thing was chewing on his face! How much angrier can it get--and would it matter if the cat was any angrier? Obviously, I thought at the time, the man was reflecting a curious and uniquely Eastern way of looking at things. Not so.

Another Marine has died in Lebanon, just one more to add to all the others. Lt. Col. William R. Higgins had been sent into the region to do something or other. It was supposed to have had something to do with peacekeeping. A 20-year Marine veteran, Higgins wore his country’s uniform with pride. On his wall at home was probably a framed certificate stating that his country had placed “special trust and confidence” in him, and in his oath as an officer he had sworn to “bear true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution of the United States. There is little doubt about the latter. There is considerable doubt about the former.

Just one more dead Marine, sent like the others on an equivocal mission by a government that shows its loyalty to its own people by doing precisely nothing about their murders. Not all that long ago William Buckley, a CIA station chief in Lebanon, was captured by other people in the area. Buckley was tortured to death. The details of his suffering have never been made public, and if what I heard was true, maybe that’s just as well--or is it? A Pan Am 747 was blasted out of the sky around Christmas--remember?--and again our government of, by and for the people has done--what?

There is no activity safer for an international terrorist than to kidnap or kill Americans.

Our options are limited, they say. Already I am reading explanations for doing nothing. When Buckley was being tortured, important people met around tables in the environs of Washington and sagely decided that to attempt a rescue was “too risky.” Too risky for whom? The tiger was chewing on Buckley’s face. Too risky for people with reputations and jobs to protect, one supposes. After all, one must have one’s priorities properly arranged.

If we do anything to Iran, they say, we run the risk of an adverse political development in the Middle East--as opposed to what exists now. We risk undercutting “moderate elements.” Higgins was hanged, perhaps not tortured to death. This may reflect moderation in those Iranian elements. It just wouldn’t do to offend them, would it?

Lacking the ability, we are told, to do something substantive, what can we do? Well, for starters, we have already started criticizing Israel for abducting a Shiite “religious leader.” (To call such a person a religious leader is bigoted mockery of Islam, but that is another question.) Higgins would not have been murdered, some suggest, except for what Israel did. For those Washingtonians who really think that way, I propose a trip to Georgetown University, where a Jesuit might give them a briefing in classical logic. Higgins was murdered by those who kidnaped him, not the Israelis. To say anything else bespeaks a curiously expressive sort of cowardly impotence that has gained currency in the government of our country.

Higgins was our man, serving our country. His well-being was our responsibility. It is the United States that sent him to Lebanon, and it is the United States that failed utterly to rescue him. One wonders how hard--or even if--we tried to do so. Yet in this case, and almost all the others, we have done nothing for fear of angering the tiger. The tiger, of course, took no notice of our good will.

It is a pleasure to report that not every government feels this way. It is less pleasant to report that the enlightened country is the Soviet Union. Recently, when three or four Soviets were kidnaped by people of a bent similar to Higgins’ captors, the KGB, it is said, bagged several members of the group and returned one with a portion of his anatomy missing. The tiger took note of that. The Soviet citizens were returned forthwith.

Perhaps the Soviets know something that we do not. You don’t really have to worry about angering the tiger, but you do have to worry about being taken seriously. How can any foreign power be expected to respect a government that does nothing when its citizens are murdered? How can any foreign government respect a country that is governed not by principles but rather by its fears? How can any foreign government respect a nation that is afraid to offend its enemies?

For a generation America has had a fixation with “sending a message” to our enemies. We want to be your friends, we tell them. The problem is that very often the other side doesn’t bother answering the phone. A good start, perhaps, would be to demonstrate the price of being our enemy, that the principles for which we stand--the right to pursue one’s life with freedom and dignity--are backed up by the same force that earned those rights for our citizens in the first place; and that he who tries to deny those rights to our citizens will be hunted down without remorse to the ends of the Earth.

We have the tools to do just that. It is dangerous, but we employ hunters who are more than willing to take their chances. Tigers can be killed. It is about time that the government found within itself the political will to fulfill its obligations to its own people. Respect will follow. It always has.